What I Did Over Summer Vacation- Revised
by 3710rice
Summary: A teacher gives an assignment. Write about your summer, but make it as crazy as possible. But the Pines twins stories were a bit too crazy... at least they aren't true, right? One-shot.


**Hey! So I should probably be working on my Steven Universe fics but this story idea would not leave me alone. This is the longest one shot/chapter I've ever written which is a bit sad because it's only about 2.4k words. But whatever. Please forgive any formatting issues, I uploaded it on mobile.**

 **I don't own gravity falls. I don't even know why I have to say that, it's pretty obvious.**

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What I Did for Summer Vacation

Ellen Barrick wrote the words on the whiteboard, then underlined them in one quick stroke. Students piled into her classroom and sat at the desks. She had given the assigned seats yesterday, and today was going to be the first assignment. It was the second day of school.

When the bell rang and the kids were in their seats, Ms. Barrick spoke up. "Good morning! Today we're going to begin working on our first project." She had that peppy beginning-of-year enthusiasm that all teachers had. Of course, it would fade as the year went on, but it was nice while it lasted. "We'll be working on, as you can see, writing about our summers."

A few students grumbled. Ms. Barrick noted that two of the kids perked up. Mabel and Dipper Pines. She normally wouldn't already know names, but the two were twins and that was vaguely interesting. The family must've gone on a trip or something.

"However, there is another thing I like to do with this project." She paused for a second, then turned and wrote 'revised' on the whiteboard, under the original prompt. "In this project, you can -and should- embellish your writing as much as possible. For example, if you got a cold and had to go to the doctor, you can say you had the flu and was steps away from death. Stuff like that."

The class perked up a bit, and though the teacher didn't notice, the Pines twins shared a small smile and a glance.

"My one rule to this project, however, is that it has to be based off of something. You can't just make stuff up. This is because at the end of the project, you will each be given another person's paper and you have to figure out what actually happened. Today you're going to start on your drafts. I expect at least one paragraph from each of you."

After the students had settled in and begun writing, Ms. Barrick sat behind her desk and read for the rest of the class.

It was her planning period on the third day, but seeing as she already planned out the first two weeks of school, Ms. Barrick had nothing to do. Curious, she looked through the pile of summer vacation essays on her desk. They had all had two days worth work on them. None seemed particularly interesting yet, but two stood out. One was already 4 sheets of paper(in small handwriting, she noted) and the other was covered in colorful illustrations and stickers.

She looked to the top right corners of the pages for the names. Dipper Pines was neatly signed on the long one, and Mabel Pines was scribbled on the colorful one. Huh. What a coincidence. She started on Mabel's, since Dipper's was more like a novel.

'OUR SUMMER VACATION' was printed at the top of the page, with a sticker of a sun next to it. She started reading. It would be fun to try and see what actually happened based off of Mabel's story.

 _This summer, my Mom and Dad sent me and Dipper to a creepy little town in Oregon called Gravity Falls. We stayed with our Great Uncle Stan in his workplace, which was called the Mystery Shack._

Okay. So far she guessed that all of this could be true, or they at least went to see relatives.

 _However, Gravity Falls was not always as it seemed. For example, about a week in, a bunch of gnomes kidnapped me and tried to make me their queen!_

Ms. Barrick chuckled. Underneath that sentence was a crude but decent drawing of several small men in hats standing on top of each other. Obviously some guy she didn't like tried to date her. Simple enough. Why Mabel chose gnomes was a little odd but maybe he was short.

 _They almost had me, but then Dipper drove in on a golf cart and beat them off with a shovel! It was awesome! Then the gnomes formed a giant monster gnome and we were freaking out! It was crazy! But then we got off in the golf cart and got back to the Mystery Shack. We were able to defeat them with a leaf blower._

The text stopped there with a drawing of Mabel and Dipper in a golf cart looking scared. The teacher reread the story over and over. Surely there was meaning behind it? Maybe the boy she didn't like and his friends ganged up on them. The leaf blower, golf cart and shovel were reasonable embellishments. Okay, they were on the far side of reasonable, but they were reasonable enough. Either way, she'd talk to Mabel about it, make sure she wasn't making up too much.

She glanced up at the clock- she still had 45 minutes before the next class. More than enough time to read Dipper's essay. She picked up the paper and began to read.

 _There we were, fleeing from a creature of unimaginable horror. How did we get here? Well, it'll all make sense when I explain.I have to warn you, this paper is not for the faint of heart. It holds a tale of monsters, ghosts, demonic possession and even worse. So, teacher, if you get scared easily, skip this paper and just give me an A._

She snorted. This kid had a sense of humor. This was going to be an interesting read.

 _It all_ _started when my sister and I got sent up to a sleepy town in Oregon called Gravity Falls. We were going to stay with our Great Uncle Stan in his tourist trap of a home. The place was called The Mystery Shack, though the S on the sign fell off after a fight with evil wax figures- more on that later_.

Okay, so it seemed the Mystery Shack was likely real. She had taken care to separate the twins and she hadn't heard or seen them talk to each other that class. So it was safe to assume any consistencies between the two stories are factual.

 _My first thoughts about the town were that is was strange. And I was right. I was beyond right. My first experience with the weirdness of Gravity Falls was about a week in. My sister Mabel was a little boy-crazy at the time. One day, she managed to find herself a boyfriend. He was older, a little creepy and very, very odd. At first I believed he was a zombie. One day, I found out otherwise._

 _I had finally found proof to my theory- a video in which Norman (the zombie dude) drops his hand. So I immediately rushed to find my sister. She was in danger, but not because of a zombie. No, her boyfriend was made up of a bunch of gnomes!"_

Ms. Barrick looked concerned for a second. The two hadn't communicated. So therefore, by her previous logic, it had to be true. But that made no sense. Gnomes don't exist. Confused, she read on.

xxxx

She didn't stop until she had read all 7 pages (the papers were front and back, except for the last one). Every paragraph detailed a story in which Dipper and usually Mabel fought off the paranormal. The stories ranged from being possessed by a demon to fighting a giant bat. The last story paragraph was about a ghost haunting some rich family's house, which their daughter fought off.

It ended rather suddenly, a little more than halfway through the summer. The last paragraph had only three sentences:

 _I'd write more but beyond this point it gets sort of conspiracy-ish and I really don't want the government knowing what really happened. I hardly know you, so I'm stopping here and I left out some of the bigger stories and details. Gifhg ml lmv._

Ms. Barrick was shocked. These stories couldn't possibly be real, yet they felt so real. The gibberish at the end had to have a meaning. Either these stories were true, or Dipper was one hell of a writer. She had to know. She turned to her computer, ready to google Gravity Falls, when the bell rang.

xxxx

She had planned to do research that night, but she had dinner with friends and she had to grade papers for her third and fifth period classes. As interesting as the Gravity Falls story was, she was a teacher and she had an obligation to her students.

She figured out a method of checking to see if it was the truth. Dipper had wrote that the demon that took over his body had stabbed him with forks and otherwise damaged him. So something like that had to leave scars. She would check his arm for scars, and if there were, than the story would be a step closer to being true.

The next day, she held the door as the students walked in. Dipper was one of the last kids in. She couldn't get a clear view of his arm but she could kind of tiny whitish scars on the side of his arm. Her blood ran cold. They did look like holes made by silverware.. Not that she would know what that would look like.

When Dipper raised his hand later to let her know he finished the draft yesterday, she saw them clearly. They were tiny dots of scar tissue, no bigger than an ant in diameter, in a line of four. These were made by forks. The story seemed true. There was no way.

xxxx

During her planning period, the woman googled Gravity Falls. This showed 2 relevant things. The first thing was a map, so she knew it was a real place. The second was a post on a blog about the paranormal, posted this summer.

 _Hey guys! I just got back from my trip to Gravity Falls, OR. The place is without a doubt the largest paranormal hotspot I've ever seen. The locals are hesitant to talk but I've seen things. Like I saw something HUGE running through the woods beside my bus. There are some other things but I want to talk about the biggest thing right now._

 _So I was walking through the town, and I went into this shop. It was a general store I think. No one was there, and I really needed a soda, so I was waiting. I saw this newspaper behind the desk, so I picked it up, curious what kind of news they had there._

 _That's when things got weird. The front page story had a picture of this kid, like maybe 13, fighting off a giant bat! And when I say giant, I don't mean large. This thing was bigger than an eagle. I quickly pulled out my phone and snapped a pic. Then the store owner came out and kicked me out, claiming the paper was for residents only. But I kept the picture, here it is!_

There was a photo below of a huge bat fighting a kid. But to Ms. Barrick, the most surprising part was not the giant bat, but who was fighting it. It was Dipper. This gave near-definite proof everything the boy had wrote was true. Okay, maybe not everything. But it sure bumped up the likelihood of that, and at least one story was real.

Searching for more proof, she looked up The Mystery Shack. It had no website, but it was listed on Yelp. The reviews were mixed, ranging from 'awesome place! very cool artifacts.' to 'fakest thing ever. Total fraud.' Beyond a dozen or so reviews, there was little other information on the place. The most recent review stated that the man who calls himself Mr. Mystery and leads the tours is actually named Stan Pines. The reviewer said that they got the information from two children working there.

The one thing that was officially listed was a phone number. She called the number, and it rang twice before someone picked up the phone.

"Hello," a man's voice, slightly nasally, answered, "This is the Mystery Shack, Soos speaking."

"Hi, I'm Ellen Barrick, a teacher at Piedmont Junior High. Can I speak to Mr. Pines, please?" She asked, careful to seem polite.

The person on the other side of the phone paused. "Sorry, he's not available right now. Can I take a message?"

"Yes, please. Do you have a pen? It'll be a pretty long message." She waited until Soos confirmed that he had a pen before continuing speaking. "Alright. So, I'm currently teaching Dipper and Mabel Pines and I need to confirm some facts about their summers-"

"I can do that!" Soos interrupted. "I was with those dudes all summer."

"Oh. Well, Dipper and Mabel said that Gravity Falls was absolutely crawling with the supernatural. Can you confirm that, and perhaps share a story or two?"

"Of course dude! There was this one time when they found a lake monster! But it turned out to be, like, just a crazy dude in a robot." Wow. He was actually confirming these stories. Soos continued, "and then once I heard that, like gnomes tried to kidnap Mabel. Another time, I got turned into a zombie and tried to eat their brains. They stopped me and the other zombies by-" He got cut off, and the next words were distant, like he was talking to another person. "Oh, hey mister Pines. Just some teacher lady, she wants to know what happened this summer."

There was a rustling, like the phone was being grabbed. The next voice that spoke was older, deep and gruff. "Listen. This is an elaborate hoax set up by the twins and this idiot here." And then the receiver clicked. She had been hung up on.

Ms. Barrick sat in silence a second. It could be a hoax, for sure. That would make more sense than everything she knew about the paranormal being wrong. But at the same time, she felt it was real, in her heart.

Either way, this was an awesome waste of 2 planning periods.

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